The Home Front (16 page)

For the past few weeks, Jody’s lumbago had been dominating their conversations. No one minded, of course. Everything was as it should be, even when the rest of the group couldn’t get a word in edgewise. They contented themselves with offering advice gleaned from their own experience. Not that anyone else had ever suffered from lumbago. The great thing about New Age cures was that they were, by definition, universal. No matter what ailed you, the Source provided the path back to health and happiness. The first step was to realize that nobody suffered alone. Ultimately, once the journey was well under way, soul searchers realized no one suffered at all.

“It started in my coccyx,” Jody said.

“Must be a resentment.”

“Why do you say that?”

“Lower back pain is a sure sign of unresolved anger.”

“Or a slipped disc.”

“Same diff. Resentment wreaks havoc on discs.”

“Have you tried acupuncture?” Debbie asked. She was new to the group and had yet to learn that virtually everybody had tried acupuncture for virtually everything. Tracy had even convinced her husband Bob to try acupuncture. The only reason it hadn’t saved their marriage was that Bob had an affair with the acupuncturist’s nurse practitioner.

“Of course I have. Twice a week for the last six months. I feel like a pincushion.”

“Do I detect a hint of sarcasm?” Tracy asked. A kinder-garten teacher, she couldn’t resist monitoring their conversations. Anything short of
Romper Room
enthusiasm was considered unnecessarily negative. “With an attitude like that, no wonder your back hurts.”

“You should try Randy,” Jill said.

“Who’s Randy?”

“My acupuncturist.”

“How much?”

“Two hundred dollars an hour.”

“Out of my price range.”

“Maybe he offers a sliding scale.”

“What’s that?” Jill asked. Her husband traveled a lot on business, leaving her free to spend most of her time spa hopping. This particular Wednesday, she had called in from Sonoma. Her wealth might have been an inspiration, living proof of cosmic abundance, if she’d been less oblivious to the exigencies of scarcity.

“Never mind.”

“Acupuncture only offers temporary relief anyway,” Pam said. “You’ve got to get to the root of the problem.”

Nobody deigned to acknowledge Pam’s suggestion. A transplant from New York City, she was the only member of the group still in therapy. Psychoanalysis was anathema to practitioners of the Source, a throwback to the days when the pathology model dominated therapeutic discourse. Jody in particular was sick and tired of Pam’s persistent belief that things like chronic pain and emotional distress meant that something was actually wrong with her.

“Have you tried Reiki?” Debbie asked.

“I’ve tried everything,” Jody said. “Chakra meditation. Thai herbal balls. Hot stone massage. TCM.”

“What’s TCM?”

“Traditional Chinese medicine.”

“Does it work for carpal tunnel syndrome?”

“It works for everything.”

“Except lumbago,” Jody said.

“You’ve got to be in the proper frame of mind,” Tracy said.

“Thanks for sharing.”

The line went quiet. Nobody except Tracy ever used this particular twelve-step expression unless they were really pissed off. Needless to say, outright hostility was unthinkable. It caused cancer, for one thing. Spicy language was completely unnecessary anyway, given the eloquence of saccharine sweetness. Thanks for sharing was the New Age equivalent of go fuck yourself. A wolf in sheep’s clothing.

“Let’s take a minute to meditate on Jody’s lumbago,” Tracy said.

Even Debbie knew this was Tracy’s way of telling Jody to shut up. Dominating session after session with something as minor as back pain was one thing, questioning the efficacy of TCM quite another. Nothing was more revered in Source circles than Chinese medicine. Tashi herself purportedly took chuan xiong for migraines. Out of habit, the group pressed their cell phones closer to their mouths, breathing in unison to focus the force of their meditation. But Jody was the only one who really spent the intervening minute contemplating her lumbago. The others concentrated on teaching her a lesson, with the notable exception of Rose.

Sometimes their conference calls made Rose feel at a disadvantage. Everyone else seemed to have an army of gurus at their disposal. Given the exorbitant cost of Max’s therapy, she doubted whether she could afford even the most precipitous sliding scale. Tashi had assured her that all she needed was the Source. But Max seemed to need more. He wasn’t progressing as quickly as she had hoped he might. She banished the thought, focusing on the miracle rather than the malady. Even so, she couldn’t escape the nagging suspicion that there was so much more she could do for him, if only she had more money. Haunted by the specter of scarcity, Rose meditated on relevant slogans.

Compare and despair.

All paths lead to the Source.

By the time they finished their meditation, it was 10:58. Last call. The end of each session was reserved for burning desires to share whatever was weighing most heavily on their minds. Ostensibly, the entire hour was devoted to this very exercise. But the last few minutes tended to elicit particularly juicy tidbits of information, things no one would ever dream of actually discussing. Dropping a confidential bomb at 10:58 ensured a kind of confessional anonymity. By the time they reconvened the following week, the dust had settled sufficiently to ameliorate the embarrassment of exposure. An unwritten rule guaranteed that these particular confidences were never mentioned again.

Rose never had occasion to unload anything even remotely revealing. If anything, she had a burning desire to express how wonderful she felt, which would have been inappropriate, if not insensitive. After all, Tracy needed to vent about how all the men she dated just wanted to get into her pants, which really only meant she missed her husband. And Pam needed to confess that she had indulged in one last shopping spree before declaring bankruptcy. The guiding principle behind these confessions was a slogan Rose scarcely understood.
You’re only as sick as your secrets.
She attributed her perennial sense of well-being to the fact that nothing deep and dark troubled the still waters of her serenity. So she took everyone by surprise, including herself, when she spoke up.

“I think my husband is thwarting Max’s progress.”

It came out of nowhere. No one said a word. It would disappear back into the Ethernet unless Rose chose to bring it up again. Truth be told, she hadn’t chosen to bring it up in the first place. She kept talking not so much to get it off her chest as to discover what she meant by this extraordinary confession.

“His negative energy is infectious. Like a virus. The whole family is at risk.”

Complaining about Todd’s bad attitude was itself a kind of bad attitude, proof positive that what she said was true. She felt guilty, but she couldn’t stop herself. Fortunately, eleven o’clock came to the rescue, breaking the vicious cycle of negativity. The familiar voice of an automated operator intervened, informing them that their time was up. She was always happy to inform them that another hour could be charged to their joint account, an offer they had accepted only once, the week Jill’s shih tzu died. Otherwise their hour together had always sufficed to transform virtually all of their problems into cosmic insights.

“Talk to you soon.”

“Have a good week.”

“Take care.”

“May the Source be with you.”

Everyone signed off with characteristic exuberance, emphatically oblivious to Rose’s bombshell. Their offhand manner implied that her secret was safe with them. But it made her feel terribly alone. The minute Rose hung up the phone, she logged onto the Source website to make an appointment with Tashi. The fact that her faith had never faltered before was a testament to the precariousness rather than sureness of her spiritual footing. One little slip, and the yawning abyss threatened to swallow her up.

* * *

To the untrained eye, Max’s second art therapy session was a fiasco. Sasha drew a family portrait again, one glorified stick figure at a time. The figure representing the little boy was poised, paintbrush in hand, at an easel. The other three, two tall and one almost as small as the boy, focused their attention on his empty canvas. Instead of filling it in with circles, as she had done the first time, she left the canvas blank for a while. Max was completely oblivious one way or the other. He alternated between being agitated and comatose, switching back and forth for no apparent reason. Sasha narrated almost exactly the same script as before, giving voice to the stick figures, all of whom were encouraging Max to paint his own picture. Every time she tried to wrap his limp fingers around the paintbrush, he threw it across the room. The fifth time she picked it up, Sasha implemented Plan B. First she made a show of shaping the bristles, running them through her fingertips until they made a sharp point. Then she dipped his brush into the red pot and started painting shapes on her forearms, circles on one, lines on the other.

“Look, Max. Your paintbrush is drawing circles.”

Max started pounding the table with his fists. The paint pots jumped up and down, but nothing spilled. They were childproof, provided the child wasn’t prone to violent outbursts. Sasha just kept drawing until she was finished.

“Look, Max. Four lines on one arm. Four circles on the other.”

He pounded even harder than before.

“Which do you like better?”

He jumped up and started running around the table. Sasha turned her attention back to the family portrait. She loaded Max’s brush again and started painting red circles on the little boy’s blank canvas.

“The little boy is drawing shapes,” she said. “One two three four circles. In rows that look like lines. See?”

Max collapsed onto the floor and started rocking back and forth, holding his head in his hands.

“Which does he like better? Lines or circles?”

Max kept rocking until Sasha filled the blank canvas with two rows of four circles. When she was finished, she opened her work bag and retrieved the family portrait she had painted last time. They looked exactly the same, lying side by side on the table, except that the first one had three rows of four circles. There was also a crease down the middle where it had been folded to fit into her bag, which she hoped wouldn’t skew the results of the experiment. She sat there for almost half an hour, monitoring Max’s response. He just kept rocking. She had never waited so long for what appeared to be so little.

Rose stuck her head in the door, wondering if they were ready for their afternoon snack, but Sasha waved her off. When it was time for her to leave for the day, she cleaned her brush but left Max’s on the table next to the red paint pot.

“See you tomorrow, Max.”

On her way out, Sasha told Rose to leave him alone for as long as possible.

“I’m not sure that’s such a good idea,” Rose said.

“I’m conducting a little experiment. Trust me.”

When Todd got home from work that night, Max’s bathwater was the color of Choo Choo Cherry again. Rose was sitting next to the tub, wearing an apron and goggles. Every time she tried to wash off the red stripes painted on his arms, he started screaming bloody murder.

“I give up,” she said.

“Want me to try?” Todd asked.

“Be my guest.”

Todd knelt down and folded back his sleeves, exposing the tattoos on his forearms. They were souvenirs from his first tour of duty in Iraq, a matching set of Kanji characters meaning
Above and Beyond
. Or so said the artist, some dude from Ramadi, who tattooed his entire squad the day after Ken Matsumoto was shot down. They couldn’t even line up his boots at the funeral ceremony. There wasn’t anything left of them.

“I’ll go make dinner,” Rose said.

Left alone, Todd tested the waters. Max let him wash his legs and even his butt, which was usually an epic battle. He all but held his breath and kept his eyes closed the whole time. Todd noticed that Max’s paint stripes were less uniform this time, facing this way and that rather than in regimented parallel lines. A couple on each arm overlapped. When he held his own arms next to his son’s, he thought he noticed an uncanny resemblance. Then he brushed it off, blaming himself for indulging in the kind of magical thinking Rose swore by. One blind optimist in the family was enough.

Todd gently raised Max’s left hand and started to splash water on his arm. The tub erupted into a whirlpool of resistance, knees jabbing and fists flying. Todd retreated, trying not to laugh. If Rose had told him once she’d told him a million times. Don’t encourage him. Letting him get his way would presumably elicit more tantrums. But as far as Todd was concerned, they had to pick their battles. This one just wasn’t worth it.

“Okay, big guy.”

Todd grabbed a towel and wrapped Max up so he could lift him out of the tub without directly touching his skin. He dressed him in a clean set of sweatpants and a tee shirt that looked like all his other tee shirts, a faded brown with a little chest pocket.

“Any luck?” Rose asked when he joined her in the kitchen. He cracked open a beer.

“Clean as a whistle except for that paint on his arms.”

Rose looked up from her dicing. Her eyes were tearing up from the onions. “Wasn’t that the point?”

“Of what?”

“The bath.”

“It’s not toxic, is it?”

“Of course not.”

“Then it’s not hurting anything. It’ll wear off.”

“Eventually,” Rose said. She scooped a knife blade of onions into the frying pan, which was already sizzling with garlic.

“Tell Sasha to use crayons if you don’t like it.”

“I never said I didn’t like it.”

“Any idea what she’s up to?”

“Check the logbook. It’s on my desk.”

“You haven’t read it yet?”

“I haven’t had time. Maureen was in crisis mode.”

“Anything serious?”

“Catastrophic. She couldn’t find her cell charger.”

Todd took his beer and the logbook onto the front porch. His neighbor Fred was edging his lawn for what must have been the fiftieth time that summer. Todd was pretty sure forty-nine times would have sufficed. Imagine having that kind of time on your hands. Fred worked nine-to-five and had two normal kids. The downside was that he was probably obsessive-compulsive. Before Max’s diagnosis, Todd wouldn’t have had a name for it. He’d learned a lot of medical lingo he wished he didn’t know.